BACKGROUND: Given that each health care system and facility faces unique site-specific risk challenges, a one-size-fits-all model does not exist in risk management. Health care managers must consider all aspects of their setting very carefully in terms of patient safety, mandatory regulations, potential medical errors in the setting, existing and future policies/procedures, as well as current and upcoming legislative acts that affect health care provision in the setting.
This module’s Case Assignment challenges you to locate and read an existing risk management and patient safety plan of a facility of your choice, and then assess its components in light of the background readings.
ASSIGNMENT: Using the information in the required readings as well as some additional research in peer-reviewed sources, complete your Case Assignment by answering the following:
1. Choose a health care facility (hospital, physician’s office, freestanding ambulatory clinic, etc.), and summarize each category of its risk management and patient safety plan. This can be your current or future-intended setting, or a facility that you locate through some research online. What is defined/included in the components of the plan? Who are the stakeholders responsible for the implementation of each component?
2. Are the directives stated by the American Society for Health Care Risk Management followed in the plan? If not, what seems to be missing?
3. What could be added/clarified in the plan’s policies and/or procedures to either further prevent risk or enhance patient safety? Be as specific as you can in your assessment.
4. Does the facility have a dedicated Patient Safety Officer (PSO)? What is the role and scope of a PSO’s daily work?
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